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I often have to change computers I work with, I might simply move from home to office, but also happens to move out of the office and work on computers provided by customers, how do you bring along everything you need?

Some suggestions that may help you and make you move with the lighter heart.

1) The first you need space to save your documents, between all operators offering this service 2 are interesting and offer a small storage to test their service:

Dropbox – Lets you have 2 GB + 250 MB for each person who enters your referral, once registered to the site you can download the software (Linux, Windows and Mac) and install it. Linux software is composed of an addon for nautilus that enables the right button to access some features provided by Dropbox and a daemon (dropboxd) that works to keep our own directory synchronized with the remote repository. Besides this dropbox also provides automatic versioning of text files and the possibility to share some files (eg pictures) with others. you can also connect with a browser to the site and once authenticated browse your files from any PC.

Ubuntu One – – Ubuntu also offers 2 GB free, additional software is available only for Linux and allows for features like “synchronizes the directory with the remote repository” and share it with one or more contacts took from Evolution; repository is still used by applications on Windows and Mac, for example software for taking notes: Tomboy (see the “TAKE YOUR NOTES ON THE CLOUD““) allows you to write notes and share them among your PC. Another interesting software is the extension for firefox Bindwood that allow to keep your bookmarks in sync among all your PC (assuming you use firefox with this add on all PCs).

You can buy the solution from 50 GB ($ 10.00 / month)

The offline alternative to this is a USB stick:

Advantages: cheap and does not need the network.

Disadvantages: It might break / damage, you might forget it or lost it.

2) A second thing that you need is your mail, even here there are two alternatives

Gmail – If you can choose the mailbox on any provider, my advice is to use this service. You can connect to your box from anywhere, with virtually infinite space.

Dropbox + Software – Many of us have a corporate email, again if you use IMAP, you will not have problems viewing your mail from anywhere, but a good alternative is to have your mailboxes in the folder configured with dropbox, so configuration and mail will be automatically synchronized between all your computers, a requirement is that you use the same mail client, Thunderbird is a great product and could be well suited to carry out this work.

3) now we need to always have with us the appointments list, similar to point two solutions are divided into two types

Google calendar – This software is great for managing your appointments, can share with others your own agenda or export calendars, additional features allow you to receive SMS messages as reminders of appointments and events.

Dropbox + Software – Like the email, you can choose software to manage calendars and save the results in the folder configured with Dropbox, similar to the above thunderbird with lighting extension is a great product that could cover the needs of mail and calendar, just as in the previous paragraph make sure that the calendars are stored in the right directory.

4) When you are around is important to keep in touch with colleagues and friends, and so you need an instant messenger!

Meebo – This site allows you to connect to various instant messaging systems, including GTalk, Facebook, ICQ, AIM and Jabber. Since our configurations are saved online you have no problem to move and stay in touch with all your contacts.

Dropbox + Software – In this case the best thing is to install the software directly into the folder configured with Dropbox, I recommend Pidgin, software that lets you communicate with various protocols.

5) We have almost everything but the applications?

Google Docs and Zoho are two good SAAS, software as a solutions logging in those sites you can have office style applications and the ability to save your documents online.

Dropbox – a great solution is to install all the software that we need in the Dropbox folder, make sure to install the “portable” release (or prepared for USB sticks) because this version has all the files used by that application in one directory and not scattered on the filesystem.

I hope this article have given you some ideas to work a bit better when you are not at your usual computer, to thank me (if you want), use my referral dropbox.